Equipment Module Workspace & SFC Editors

The Equipment Module Workspace is the graphical home for designing an Equipment Module's behaviour. It shows two diagrams side by side: the Overview — every Configuration and Equipment Phase laid out as a sequential function chart (SFC) — and the Phase editor — the control-step sequence inside whichever phase you are working on. Both panes are live, editable canvases that follow the same conventions as the process SFC Editor (GRAFCET), so the editing gestures you already know carry straight over.

💡 Why one window: designing a phase means constantly referring to the configurations it bridges. Keeping the Overview visible while you edit a phase's steps means the configuration and state context your conditions reference is always one glance away — no bouncing between separate windows.

🗺️ Opening the Workspace

Every route into the Equipment Module's graphical view lands in the same combined Workspace:

• The SFC Editor button on the Equipment Module Ribbon's Configurations panel.

• The Overview button on the Equipment Module form and on the Edit Template form.

• The Open Overview action on an Equipment Module.

The Workspace opens with the Overview on the left and the Phase editor on the right in placeholder mode ("no phase loaded — click Edit SFC on a phase in the Overview"). Click Edit SFC on any phase node and the right pane fills with that phase's steps; click Edit SFC on a different phase and the right pane swaps without disturbing the left.

🧭 Workspace layout

The shared toolbar

One toolbar runs across the top of the Workspace and owns the controls that apply to both panes:

Each pane keeps its own pane-specific tools where they belong: Add State / Add Phase / Layout on the left; the Start and Result chips, Add Step, Add Transition, and Layout on the right.

Collapsing a pane

A splitter divides the two panes 50/50 by default and you can drag it to favour one side. Each pane header carries a collapse chevron. Collapse the left pane and an "expand-left" control appears on the inside edge of the right header; collapse the right pane and an "expand-right" control appears on the left header — the button that brings a pane back always lives on the pane that stays visible, so you can never lose both. Collapsing one side preserves the other side's scroll, zoom, and node positions.

Cross-pane sync

The two panes are one editing surface, not two windows pretending to be one. Any change you make on one side reflects on the other: rename a phase in the Overview and the Phase editor's header updates; add a step on the right and the phase's "{n} steps" badge on the left updates; delete a phase and the right pane clears automatically.

🟦 The Overview canvas

The Overview lays out the whole Equipment Module as an SFC: Configuration nodes (the resting states) and Phase nodes (the trajectories between them), with edges showing each phase's Start → Phase → Result pipeline.

Reading the Overview

• A Configuration node shows the configuration's colour and name; hover (or turn on Show All Details) to read the per-item state list — what each cell sets — without opening another window.

• A Phase node shows the phase's name, its coloured Start and Result badges, and a step count. Its border and icon take the phase's resolved colour.

• Edges connect a Start configuration into a phase and a phase into its Result configuration, so the full snapshot pipeline reads at a glance.

Working on the Overview

🟩 The Phase editor canvas

The right pane shows the loaded phase as START → control steps → END. The Start and End configurations materialise as their own distinct blue cards bracketing the green control steps, so every phase reads as a complete "from configuration A, through steps, to configuration B" story right on the canvas.

Start and End configuration cards

The START and END cards carry a coloured bullet matching the configuration's colour and the configuration name; hover (or use Show All Details) to expand the per-item state list — the same information the Overview shows on its Configuration nodes. They render with a doubled border (a teal halo for START, an indigo halo for END) so their role is unmistakable. A phase with no Start or Result configuration simply omits the corresponding card.

Building the step sequence

1. Add a control step with the Add Step button.

2. Route a transition from a step using its Edge chip — pick the target step and supply a condition — or use Add Transition.

3. Edit a step's actions with the Actions chip. Each action sets an item's state, percent, in-state attributes, or instrument control — the same rich payload as a configuration cell, edited through the same mode toggle and typed attributes.

4. Mark a terminus for looping phases: the red End chip on a step toggles that step as the phase's end step, and the node gains a doubled green border so you can see the terminus from across the canvas.

Inline edge-condition editing

Transition conditions are edited directly on the edge label. Click into the label and an expression editor opens in place, with intellisense over the template's instrument-item and configuration-item nicknames — type the condition right on the line, like a comment. The condition is saved when you click away. This is the same editing model as the process GRAFCET editor.

🏭 Example: in a Caustic Wash phase, a transition out of the "Heat to Setpoint" step might carry the condition TIC-301 >= 80 typed straight onto the edge — when the temperature controller reads 80 °C or above, the sequence advances.

🖱️ Canvas conventions (both panes)

📄 Exporting to PDF

The Export PDF button produces a clean, vector PDF deck — small in size and crisp at any zoom — with the per-node action chips and edge editors hidden so the printed diagram reads as a finished drawing.

Exports land in a tidy Equipment Modules / PDF / {template} sub-folder under the module's Exports tree — the same convention the GRAFCET editor uses — and Explorer opens at the result folder when the export finishes. The main Export PDF dialog on the Module ribbon also carries an SFC group with Phases SFC and Equipment Modules SFC checkboxes, so one export run can produce process PDFs, GRAFCET PDFs, and Equipment Module SFC PDFs together. Those two checkbox choices are remembered per module.

✅ Workflow: design the module in the Workspace, hit Export PDF, and hand the resulting deck to the wider team or fold it into a project deliverable — no print-to-PDF screenshot tools, no alt-tabbing.

🔗 Related pages

• Equipment Module — building modules and the configuration template form

• Equipment Module Configurations & Phases — what the nodes on these canvases contain

• SFC Editor (GRAFCET) — the process-level editor these canvases mirror

• Equipment Module Ribbon — where the SFC Editor and Export PDFs buttons live